


Print The Legend

by redfiona



Category: Speed Racer (2008)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Prompt Fic, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-28 18:19:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3864928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redfiona/pseuds/redfiona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Y'know, everybody thought that me and Stickleton hated each other. Funny, ain't it?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Print The Legend

He and Stan Stickleton hadn't run into each other growing up. The US was big enough that they didn't race in the same formulas. Even the tracks they raced on barely overlapped. Ben knew Stickleton was good, saw his name on the fastest lap ranks at those tracks where they did both compete. But he didn't know him.

Then they grew up.

And there was only one place they wanted to be, the WRL circuit, because only the best of the best drove there. He didn't know about how Stickleton had funded his junior career, but his mother and father had had to scrimp for every penny they'd ever put towards his racing, and all the prize money had always gone back in to pay for upgrades to the car. The only way Ben could ever pay them back was to win some WRL races.

Of course, talent wasn't the only thing the WRL teams were looking for, so it was a mixture of that, a giving sponsor and some luck that got Ben his seat. He and Stickleton met for the first time in the locker room before their first League race, sent to get changed somewhere ‘round the back, the kind of away rookies always got sent. They took one look at each other and they *knew*.

They never talked about it, because how could they? It wasn't like they were friends. Secrecy was the one thing that united them, it was something they’d accepted when they'd signed off on the morality clause in their contract, which was vague enough to cover whatever the team owners wanted it to. Mostly, it was just another way for the teams to sack them, not that they needed an excuse with the way the contracts were written, but the teams liked to give the fans one. In Ben's second year, they sacked Ratto, who'd been champion three years before. They said it was for failing a drugs test for weed, which was true enough but it was at an out-of-competition test, he didn't have any commercial activities that week, and it wasn't as though was a performance-enhancing substance. Everyone in the pits knew it was really because Ratto'd asked for a raise.

All the racers recognised that sort of thing as their entry fee for being part of the WRL series.

He and Stickleton ran quite well that first season, nothing spectacular but then again, no-one expected them to do well, not in the cars they were in. But they both got points finishes, Ben in Japan and Stickleton in Hungary, which was enough to get them seats in better teams.

If his life had been the kind of story that the League's PR people spun, then that would have been when he realised his undying love for Stickleton. Real life is not a story. Everything else aside, that Stickleton and he were competitors, that even at that early stage Ben knew that Stickleton would be his major rival, he just wasn't interested in Stickleton, who was a long, lean, anti-social streak of a man, whose every move gave away his upbringing in the open-wheel e-formulas, rather than the electric stock cars that Ben had spent his teenage years in.

A spin machine built itself round them nonetheless, first to create a story of the young guns versus the old 'uns, marking them out as the new breed of racing driver who was all work and no play, mostly because they didn't keep Pit Girls as notches on their bedposts. It wasn't only them, Dave Delgado had a lovely wife back in Baton Rouge that he would never cheat on and Bilal Haq didn't drink. Ben went on dates with some of the Pit Girls because he knew he'd got to play the game. Stickleton didn't, which was always his problem. There were a couple of times when someone took photos of Stickleton in gay bars, which could have seen him kicked out. Ben stood as a fake alibi for Stickleton when that happened, because he hoped that Stickleton would do the same for him. It worked well enough, that and all of the photos were so blurry that Stickleton's own brother wouldn't have been able to swear that it was him.

Later on, when it was clear that Burns vs Stickleton was going to be the headline battle for the next few years, the story changed to being everyman Ben Burns who tries hard vs aloof, mercurial genius Stan Stickleton. It's all lies, Ben would have put money on the fact that he could have gone wheel-to-wheel with Stickleton and won, while he knows that Stickleton worked as hard on his car as he had done, trying to wring every last second out of his machine.

It all built up to the '43 Prix. Now as far as Ben knew, even now, all the races up to the Prix were raced fair and square, or near enough. He and Stickleton were tied on points going into the race and were tied on countback if they both crashed out. It was all set up for a grand finale. The whole world was watching to see which one of them would be victorious. But apparently that wasn't enough for the owners of the League. They wanted to make sure they made the most money possible out of who the winner was, and the lie of hard-working Ben Burns sold more Crunchie Flakes, so they decided Ben would win. To his dying day, Ben didn't know why they told him and Stickleton, in the same meeting to cap it all, instead of just fixing Stickleton's car. He supposed it was so that neither of them could expose the team owners later, not without exposing themselves. Of course, they fixed Stickleton's car anyway, reducing the amount of juice going through it so he'd go slower in the straights, because what racer would voluntarily throw a race?

Ben faked elation after the race, he'd spent enough of his life lying that it was easy enough. He could only relax once he'd got back to the locker room, which took an age because every news outlet in the world wanted pictures and an interview. Stickleton was the only one left in there when Ben finally got back, cheeks aching from the smiled he’d had to put on.

"How's it feel, Champ?" Stickleton laughed, which made it about six times that Ben had ever heard Stan laugh. He meant it too, with no animosity towards Ben for what had happened, which was Stickleton all over. The one time no-one would have begrudged him throwing a tantrum or a silent sulk, he didn't. All he said before he left was not to worry, and that he had a plan. At the time, Ben presumed that Stickleton was planning on being so far ahead by the Prix next year that they wouldn't be able to pull this trick again, but now he suspects that Stickleton was intending to go to the police, or worse the press, about what had gone on.

Stickleton wasn't the only one with a plan. Ben was going to go to the league commissioner and say that, if the same thing happened next year, Stickleton ought to be the one chosen to win, because it would keep people's interest and get them hooked for the season after that (and then hope they'd let them race that one out properly so he, and Stickleton, would finally know who was the better driver). He even came up with financial projections and costings for this plan. He felt he owed it to Stickleton, not that he couldn't beat him fair and square, but he hadn't, and he wanted to make it right.

Then the Cristo happened.

Ben didn't know why they did the Cristo, or rather, he knew why the racers did it, it was the Cristo. It was real racing, more raw than the sanitized WRL tracks they raced on for the rest of year. What he didn't understand was why their teams let them, because the Cristo was dangerous. Everyone knew that. Yes, they still had their safety pods but accidents were more likely to happen at the Cristo, it was the nature of the event.

And until Speed Racer came along, that's what Ben thought had happened, a stupid damn accident. He hadn't pegged himself as being quite so naive, but apparently he was. He'd thought that Stan had taken one risk too many, because that was Stickleton all over, he'd rather not finish than not be first.

Ben remembered crossing the line, and the look on everyone else's faces. That was another moment where he just knew, and he'd guessed who it had happened to.

He finished the season, an iron-clad contract saw to that, and won the title again. It felt no better than the first time.

He quit the league that off-season. At first his team and then the series owners tried to stop him, and they'd got plenty of material that might have forced him to stay, but then someone decided that it was easier to spin it than deal with the fall-out if Ben called their bluff. So soon the papers were filled with trash about Ben Burns retiring because he missed Stickleton that much.

Which wasn't the truth, it wasn't anything like missing him. Stickleton had been a pain in the neck, but he was the only guy who had ever regularly beat Ben. There really was no point in racing the others.

Ben still raced the Cristo every now and again afterwards, until age caught up with his reaction speed. He never did win it.

He withdrew into the semi-privacy of the retired Prix champion, and it got to the stage where people knew him as much for his commentary as for his racing. If he's invited to press parties now, the photo captions tended to be 'former racing champion Ben Burns and friend'. Steve, who'd been his partner for coming on eight years, had learned to deal with being 'and friend'. There'd been a time when he'd complained, and Ben understood why, because it must have been wearing not to be publicly recognised, but there was no way that Ben could go public, not with what the owners had on him, the broadcast teams had their contracts too. Ben had tried to explain it to Steve without giving away his secret, because he was taking that to his grave with him. He was unendingly grateful that Speed Racer had kept it to himself. Ben didn't doubt that Detector knew, but he'd long since assumed the detective knew everything. He hoped that Detector would decide that there were bigger villains in this than a pawn like Ben, but Ben lived every day with the fear that maybe he'd decide that Ben had gained too much from keeping quiet, and deserved to be exposed.

He'd lose Steve too, if it ever came out. Because Steve was a good man, who already put up with a lot. See also, 'friend'. It wasn't as though Ben kept him a secret from everyone, just the public, which was the kind of compromise he could see anyone objecting to. Steve sometimes suggested getting caught kissing somewhere, the kind of thing that even Ben's bosses couldn't deny. Ben thought Steve was underestimating how crooked the people running the League were.

Then again, maybe that was Stickleton had been trying to do back in the day and Ben had ruined it for him trying to help. It's one of the many things that, looking back, he should probably have talked to Stickleton about.

As it is, he'll let someone else be the guy the spinners twist into being “the brave first gay 'Prix driver”.  


**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for a 2009 lgbtfest prompt. Yes, I really do write at snail speed.


End file.
